Windows Web Hosting Q&A – Shared or VPS

James C (10:53:40) : Hi Mark N.! Thank you for contacting 3Essentials. How may I assist you today ?Mark N. (10:54:30) : I have been looking at the options you offer and have a few questionsJames C (10:55:03) : Sure. What can I answer for you?Mark N. (10:55:47) : We have one DNN site, low volume, less than 1000 hits per day.Mark N. (10:55:53) : From what I gather we would probably be fine with the Windows web hosting “Shared One” plan as opposed to a VPS. But I’m not sure. I have some questions first. Mark N. (10:56:04) : If we sign up with your company are we obligated for a window of time? Mark N. (10:56:57) : Of course we would hope that we would be entering into a long term relationship James C (10:57:03) : Just the period you have paid for but as a new customer you would qualify for our 30 Day Moneyback Guarantee. http://www.3essentials.com/moneyback/Mark N. (10:57:18) : Is payment monthly? James C (10:57:23) : We offer both monthly and yearly options.Mark N. (10:57:41) : If we sign up for a Windows shared one plan, will you move our site over for free? James C (10:58:51) : We will move the site if it falls with in the specifications here for One Free site move with a new plan. http://www.3essentials.com/onboarding/Mark N. (10:59:34) : The reason we are wanting to switch our provider is due to downtime. I have some questions regarding downtime. Mark N. (10:59:46) : Would we experience more downtime with a windows web hosting plan vs a windows VPS plan? James C (10:59:52) : As you said your site has been up for a while you will want to make sure that the site files are less than the 10GB and that the database is not larger than 500MB to qualify for the Windows Shared One plan.Mark N. (11:00:06) : Ok Mark N. (11:00:45) : I think our site files and db fall well below those thresholds but I will have to check. Mark N. (11:00:51) : regarding downtime… James C (11:02:26) : The Shared One plan is a shared platform for windows web hosting so other customers can influence your availability if they are attacked or compromised and it does not include a SLA. The Managed One Windows VPS plan does include the 100% Uptime SLA. It is comes with a dedicated IP so that helps prevent the issues with shared IP’s and also you would have dedicated resources so another customers compromised site would not be using up the CPU, RAM, etc of your VPS like is possible on a shared server. James C (11:03:38) : We do address attacks and such on a shared server of course but it is not something that can be prevented 100% due to the nature of such services.Mark N. (11:04:00) : How often do you experience downtime between Windows web hosting on shared vs a windows VPS plan? How long on average are the downtimes between the “shared one” vs a VPS plan? Mark N. (11:04:41) : I know you don’t have actual numbers, generalization is fine James C (11:08:02) : VPS downtime is usually limited only to Updates and Patching of Windows, while with shared it could be months between major issues or days. We do deal with those issues when they occur and implement measures to prevent future issues but it is a possibility. James C (11:08:46) : Also with VPS Updates and Patches we can and do schedule them for night time so that there will be less impact on your sites.Mark N. (11:09:41) : What sort of “disaster recovery” steps do you have in place if the “worse case” scenario: happens? E.g. if a cloud server goes down? Do you have the ability to get all sites on a failed server up and running quickly on another server via backup/recovery?

James C (11:10:46) : With Both the Windows Shared and Windows Managed VPS plans you have backups that allow for 7 days backups at the file level and for full VPS restores if necessary.Mark N. (11:14:26) : What would be a worse case scenario regarding downtime for our website? One hour, 8 hours, etc…It seems to me that if the right backup/recovery plans are in place, a worse case scenario like a server fails or a site is compromised a company could restore the previous day’s data on another server in a short amount of time to get us back up and running. Mark N. (11:15:41) : Sorry to keep on this point, but we have experienced long downtimes with our current provider and this is the main point we want to switch and I want assurances that we could not just be moving and experiencing the same types of issues. James C (11:16:33) : It would depend on the amount of data that has to be transferred and number of customers affected. With VPS it is usually under a few hours. Shared would likely take much longer depending on the recovery required. VPS is usually as simple as waiting on the snapshot to copy to a new host where shared will require a lot more effort and complexity due to its nature.Mark N. (11:17:22) : How many web sites per server between the shared one windows and a Managed Windows VPS plan? James C (11:20:23) : Shared is max 100 web sites per server which is much lower than the industry average by a lot, but VPS is your own virtual server so that means it shares hardware but it is divided. So the number of Sites on a VPS is yours only. Hence the faster recovery time since we essentially in the Disaster Recovery scenario only have to copy your files or a copy of the Virtual hard disk to get it backup and running on new hardware.Mark N. (11:21:17) : So I guess my question, VPS, is how many VPS’s are there on a physical server? Mark N. (11:21:36) : Thank you for your patience with all my questions. James C (11:23:58) : That depends on the host it is on and a number of other factors and is way less than shared. But the difference is that each VPS is a separate file/server instance to recover and can be done several at a time and to multiple new Hosts where shared customers will have to wait until the entire server is restored.Mark N. (11:25:40) : Explain how support would work if were in the middle of a downtime. Currently we do not much explanation of what is going on re: why our site is down and virtually no ETA on when we would be back up. Mark N. (11:26:03) : Said another way, we want to move to a company that provides excellent support. James C (11:28:38) : We may not be able to give an exact ETA in all instances but we keep customers updated of outages from our System Status page. As a customer you have access to that page. During server outages we update that page every 30 minutes during the outage. James C (11:29:29) : If the issue is related to your web application such as DNN we will let you know and provide you with any server side details to give your developer so that you can work with them to get it back up faster.Mark N. (11:29:44) : Finally, if we started out on the “shared one” plan and moved to a VPS plan would you move us for free? James C (11:32:21) : Yes we do with all new plans purchased. As you would need to purchase the new plan to upgrade to and any prorated balance on the existing plan would be credited by extending the renewal date on the new plan.Mark N. (11:33:54) : I am not a developer and we would prefer to not to have to use our developer in the move process. Our site is a DNN site and is up and running fine. How much assistance do you need in moving our site? James C (11:36:31) : That is outlined in the http://www.3essentials.com/onboarding/ page. There usually is no issues with moves that match the requirements there. James C (11:37:50) : We would only be able to verify that the public portion is working of course as that is all we verify before we approve the move of the site.Mark N. (11:38:28) : James, thank you for your time and patience! I will be running this information by the “powers that be” here and we will be making a decision soon. James C (11:39:00) : Sounds good. Thank you and if you have any more questions please feel free to ask.Mark N. (11:39:16) : Will do, bye for now…